


Forget Me Not

by krissology



Category: Prospect (2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Dream Sex, F/M, Romantic Soulmates, Smut, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-16
Updated: 2021-03-23
Packaged: 2021-03-25 05:33:52
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 11,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30084240
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/krissology/pseuds/krissology
Summary: A soulmates AU - You and Ezra have visited each other in reoccurring dreams since you were young — never having met or seen one another in real life, never even sure the other truly existed. That is, until both your pods dock on the same ship headed toward The Ephrate. *smut.
Relationships: Ezra (Prospect 2018)/Original Character(s), Ezra (Prospect 2018)/Original Female Character(s)/Original Female Character(s), Ezra (Prospect 2018)/Reader
Comments: 17
Kudos: 42





	1. Fortuity

**Author's Note:**

> Ezra’s vocabulary alone should have deterred me but alas, I must love to stress myself out. Thanks Zeek Earl, I'm sorry if I butchered your universe but hey I did say it's alternate. Sex- but of course.

THEN

It would take at least a cycle and a half for this transport ship to make its way entirely to The Ephrate. Back to the dense, bustling, mainland planet you fucked off of several moons ago with Logan. _Let’s go rogue for a little while_ , he had said, _stick our feet in the sand._

So you did just that. Traveling with your lover, not much more than a couple duffle bags between the two of you, and it was refreshing. Hop on a pod with whatever currency you had jingling in your pockets, find a new constellation orbiting a habitable planet on the map, then throw the dart.

The Glades were perfect. Beautiful oceanic moon, black sand beaches. The climate kept your skin glistening happily during the day, body warm to the touch. At night the breeze danced through the billowing curtains of your cozy bungalow, wiped the sweat off both your bodies tangled between the sheets.

You spent every day wrapped in barely enough clothing to cover yourselves, drinking in the sun as you laid across the sand, dining with the locals on fresh aquatic dishes, shopping through markets of the native villages. And the sex was invigorating, when you felt that good all the time, were that tipsy all the time, you couldn’t help but fuck each other senseless.

You were welcomed outsiders, getting fat on the feeling of a life that didn’t exist on The Ephrate. You thought several times about ways that you could stay there forever. Odd jobs you could do in this society to keep you submerged in it. You and Logan even sold your own personal belongings to the locals for awhile to spread yourselves thinner, things they could only find on the mainland. But eventually the money had to run out.

 _If we leave now, we have just enough to catch the return back to The Ephrate. If not, we’re gonna be stranded here babe. Next ship doesn’t pass for another three cycles._ Logan had said. So that was that, you spent a final night in paradise listening to the waves as they rocked you to sleep, and like every single night before that one, like it was clockwork, you dreamt about him. The man with the silver tuft in his hair, who came to you so often in your sleep you learned to expect him.

_You opened your eyes with a content sigh, twisting to face the man who laid with you now in the bed._

_“Hi,” you smiled. Those brown eyes dark as night bore into yours, and he smirked back at you._

_“You’ve been having fun,” he said, “I have a rightful concern you may forget about me.”_

_“I’ve tried,” you answered, reaching out to trace the silver half moon scar on his cheek with your thumb._

_“I’m wounded by your brashness, Birdie,” he feigned insult, grabbing your hand to place it over his heart as if it were breaking, “you would miss me.”_

_You twisted your fingers into his own, nodding your head knowingly, “like the rain in a drought.”_

_There was a comfortable silence then, where you both basked in the unsaid. He swept a stray strand of hair away from your forehead._

_“Are you going to tell him about me?” he asked._

_“About the imaginary man who haunts my dreams?” You traced the plush skin of his bottom lip with your fingertips._

_“Is that all I am now?” His voice got tied up in a low seductive drawl, one eyebrow shooting up in question._

_“Yeah,” you sighed, kissing the knuckles on the back of his hand, “that’s all you are.”_

After that you couldn’t sleep. You sat up all night in bed, watching Logan snore beside you, eventually pulling out your worn leather journal to write about the man in your dreams for what seemed like the thousandth time.

The next day your pod touched down on the transport right around the same time Ezra was boarding his pod on The Green. Cargo heavy with a precious gem harvest he’d spent seven cycles prospecting. He planned to catch a ride on the transport ship back to The Ephrate and trade his way to riches, stick around just long enough to make his peace with the mainland and then become a ghost, gone in the starstruck dust.

He kicked his little ship into orbit without a second look back, scattered belongings he was in too much of a rush to stow away floating in zero gravity around his head. Books dog eared and browning around the edges from wear, several samples of dried flowers he’d picked in his travels weaseling their way out of the folded pages. Stray oxygen packs, a dirty compression shirt he’d stripped himself of minutes before, long forgotten empty wrappers from stale protein bars.

Seven long cycles out in this forestry, alone. Took him twice as long to harvest without a second set of hands and he swore under his breath on more than one occasion that as long as he lived he’d never prospect without a partner again. He wasn’t entirely alone by his standards though. He had his books, and a shoddy radio with adhesive tape holding the metal antennae at just the right angle for an oldies station to sift through. He had befriended a blue jay for a while, they both ended up at the watering hole at the same time a few mornings when Ezra slipped in to bathe. Eventually the blue jay stopped coming around. He had a handful of weathered photographs he found on a dig, sometimes he’d look at them and imagine the scenarios come to life. Give the people names and stories.

And well, he had you. The girl that didn’t exist.

For as long as he could remember, you took up a stable residency in his dreams. As a friend, a partner, a lover. Those were his favorite nights out on the unforgiving Green. Falling asleep and then finding you there in bed with him, stark nude as the day you were born.

_“You’re tired, Ezra,” you said and your voice was angelic to him, a calming whisper._

_“The strength of these old bones does deceive me, Birdie,” he answered, pulling you on top of his body, parting your legs over his hips, “but you’d sooner call me manic, than tired if I ever wished you away for sleep.”_

_“Let me take care of you,” you dipped down to catch his lips with your own, tongue sliding against his in a quick movement before you pulled away._

_He held your hips while you moved above him, stretching up on your knees just high enough to reach between your two bodies. Ezra groaned low and deep as your palm engulfed him, stroked his cock, dragging the tip of him through the wet valley of your folds._

_“You’re doing so good out here on your own, Ez,” you cooed, notching the head of him at your fluttering opening, “you deserve a break.”_

_You slid down onto him perfectly, and he filled you tight, grunting at the squeeze as your warm walls pulsed around him. He watched you take a beat to savor the blissful feeling of being so full, your core slick and wanting, before lifting your hips and riding him back down again._

_“Kevva and all his men — fuck,” he breathed out, “I have never felt a euphoria near comparable to the likes of you, Birdie.” He tangled his hand in your hair, pulling you down against his mouth again. You rocked your hips against his faster, bit at his bottom lip as he kissed you._

_His unoccupied hand slid up your thigh, taking a handful of your ass and kneading it as you rode him. He pushed and pulled you up and down harder on his dick, licked the supple moans out of your mouth as they left your throat._

_“Can you take me harder, sweetheart?” he asked, question sounding more like begging than an inquiry._

_You caught his eye and nodded, felt him lift your ass with two big warm hands and then slam you down against the apex of his hips hard enough to make you gasp. And again. And again. The twisted groans that pulled from his throat had you whimpering against his ear._

_“That sound,” he half sighed, half chuckled into the open air, delirious on how close you were getting him, “you make me depraved, dream girl, you make me— fuck,” he cut himself off with a guttural moan._

_He planted his feet firm against the thin mattress and wrapped his arms around your body as he hammered up into you, matched the wave of your hips with his thrusts until the tightening feeling in his shaft became devastating. “Don’t you dare stop on me,” he warned shakily, “don’t—don’t you dare.”_

_“Cum for me, Ezra,” you sang, lifting your body back up so he could see the entirety of you, watch the pebbled peaks of your breasts bounce as you fucked him._

_He pressed his face between the soft mounds of your chest when he came, muffled his groaning into the damp skin as his body shook underneath you. The way your walls contracted around his length milked him dry, and before he could even pull out entirely, he felt the warm drip of his own release trickle down his dick, matte the wiry hair at the base of his shaft, his stomach._

Just like that night, he would often wake up boxer briefs sticky with his own release, cursing himself alone in his bed. Wondering who and why you were, a fever dream, his own personal form of glorious torture.

NOW

“Quit fucking stealing off my plate,” you jab a half eaten wafer at Logan across the table, “you’d think you hadn’t eaten for days.”

“Oh c’mon babe,” he stabs at your plate again, and you chuckle, he’s grinning ear to ear and you spar with his utensil, “you know you aren’t gonna finish that.”

You give in and let him pick a stray piece of meat off your tray, “food on this ship isn’t gonna be the same as it was in The Glades,” your body tips back against the backrest of the booth, “it’s back to reality.”

“Well not completely,” he abandons his fork to take a swig of his drink, “I mean yeah, when we get home— but we still have a long ride on this transport.”

You look around the communal dining area, the place is like a shopping center food court, several ticky-tacky shacks with different cuisine lined up next to one another. Every-which gender and species scattered about at their own little tables. Maybe families traveling to visit more of their own, maybe friends headed to a vacation spot, could be a lone straggler starting a new life on whatever system the ship happens to pass.

There’s a giant screen hitched on one of the walls, shows arrivals and departures, next destinations, systems you’re passing through currently and what’s on the horizon. The red blinking alarm light attached to the screen indicates there’s a pod on-load docking currently in the garage bay.

“I just wish there was more to do on this thing,” you sigh and focus again on the meal in front of you, noticing that quite a bit more off your plate had gone missing. You squint your eyes accusingly and point your fork in Logan’s direction but before you can berate your boyfriend over your obvious lack of food, he cuts you off—

“Ah look, new travelers just pulled in,” he nods his head in the direction of the steel elevator doors across the room as they open, a grove of people make their way into the common area with bags in hand, confused looks on their faces as they try to find their way through the busy quarter. “This is a great place for people watching,” he added, “get to judge everybody immediately, you know, it’s kind of fun.”

You ignore him for the most part, only giving the arriving group short glances as they move their way into the space. A family with young kids and way too many suitcases between them. A couple, probably ten years older than yourself, holding hands and heading toward the health food concession. A group of young girls, giggling and whispering to one another, preoccupied with a communication tablet they’re all looking over. Then a man, just — one man.

Dark green cargo pants tucked into half tied boots, black long sleeve shirt wrinkled enough you can still notice it despite the color. Olive skin that gives way to scratchy looking, unkempt stubble which starts halfway up his neck and peppers his cheeks and chin in patches. A silvery half moon scar adorns his left cheek—

You feel a sudden tightening in the cavity of your chest like someone has your heart in a vice grip. Your mouth gapes open as you take him in, one ratty duffle bag slung over his shoulder, a thick paperback book stuffed into his back pocket that you can see when he turns to the side. Brown eyes darting around the area like he’s familiarizing himself, that tuft of blonde hair sticking out above his forehead like a sore thumb.

You feel like you can’t breathe, pinch your own skin in an attempt to pull yourself out of this daydream you must be in — but no, it’s real. All of a sudden your mouth is wet, too wet, and you try to swallow down the nauseous feeling climbing it’s way up your throat but you can’t. Your skin flushes hot, feverish. Logan catches your attention for a second, reaching over the table to grab your hand, “You ok babe? You don’t look so good.”

You take a deep breath, fighting off your queasiness as you dart your eyes back in the direction of the man, then lose your breath again when you realize he’s locked on you now as well. You both still, make absolutely no attempt to hide the fact that you’re staring at a stranger in a crowded room.

Ezra has a look on his face like he’s wounded, shifting his gaze slightly to take in the way Logan has your hand wrapped in his own before reverting to matching your stare again.

Your boyfriend notices your line of sight and turns to look at the man too, gives him a once over and a quizzical eyebrow raise before turning back to you, “get that guy a razor, am I right?” he snarks, jutting a thumb over his shoulder toward him.

Your stomach flips once more and you realize that this time you can’t contain the sick feeling making it’s way up your windpipe. You bolt from the table, make your way through the maze of people and nearly get to the restrooms before you have to abandon your plan and double over a cafeteria trash can to yack.

 _It can’t be him_ , you talk yourself down. He’s not real. _He’s not real._

You consider wiping the remnants of your spit across the back of your sleeve but just as you stand up a hand reaches out to offer up a stack of napkins. “Thanks,” you say before getting a good look at the person in front of you — you freeze up again when you do.

Ezra’s stood there, as dumbfounded as you are, taking in every inch of your face as he’s done a thousand times before, but somehow this feels like the very first time.

“If it makes you feel any better Birdie, your affliction is one I can sympathize with all too well right now.”


	2. Ambivalence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A Soulmates AU - You and Ezra have visited each other in reoccurring dreams since you were young — never having met or seen one another in real life, never even sure the other truly existed. That is, until both your pods dock on the same ship headed toward The Ephrate.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some interliterary-textuality as I like to call it. References to the novel, The Master and Margarita by Mikhail Bulgakov. Sex- but of course. As always thank you Zeek Earl.

There’s something to be said about slow motion. It’s like, life improvising. Like, the universe is asking for a moment to figure itself the fuck out. That’s what it felt like with Ezra in front of you. That every moment leading up until now was somehow completely insignificant all of a sudden, like fate had carved a road for you but somewhere along the way made this precise moment a construction zone and no one remembered to finish the job. So here you are, suspended in a truncated reality and you’re pretty sure that life just whispered in your ear “wing it” because not even the all knowing universe was prepared for this plot twist.

You take the much too thick pile of napkins from his hand, notice the weathered bullseye inked into the meat between his thumb and forefinger and immediately think of every time you’ve kissed it. Every time you’ve traced it with your own fingertips, bit down into it where it covered your mouth to stifle a moan.

“I didn’t mean to startle you,” Ezra says, scratching the stubble on his cheek like he’s now looking for something to do with his hands, “I’d love to claim it as my own sheer acuity, but unfortunately you do know how to part a room.”

You look around him and notice the sea of prying eyes, people trying to get a glimpse of the girl who just emptied her guts into the trash can. When they notice you looking everyone resumes, save for the vague whispering and occasional nosey glance. You think the teenage girls in the corner might have started recording, just in case.

“I’m sorry,” you finally speak, forcing yourself to laugh along with the words “very attractive of me.”

It’s Ezra’s turn to gawk now, and you’re somehow even more beautiful in the flesh. He can’t help himself from looking directly into your eyes, mapping them from the stark pigment of your irises to the flutter of your eyelashes as they fall against your cheeks. He takes in the soft complexion of your skin, draws lines with his sight down the span of your jaw, and his mouth quirks up in a subtle smile when his eyes land on your lips. With all the time he’s spent inside his head with you, committing your face to memory, your body to memory, this felt more like a pleasant nostalgia than an introduction.

“What’s wrong?” You ask, blotting the napkin again against the corner of your mouth where you notice him looking, “is there something on my face?”

He smiles bigger now, shaking his head in response and if it were anybody else you might think they were pitying you but not him. He’s got this awe struck sparkle in his eye like he’s discovered a new constellation and it makes you smile back at him like you’re seeing the modish formation of stars as well.

“No— no it’s just,” he starts, pausing to collect his thoughts, “I feel like— I know you from somewhere.”

He knows how he knows you, of course. The most stable relationship his life has ever had, come in the form of a reoccurring dream woman. But he’s not about to say that. The scraggly nomad still in the same clothes he’s been donning for two days, hair unruly, beard unkempt. Just off a toxic moon after 6 too many cycles and telling a stranger he sees her naked when he goes to sleep at night. Yeah, that won’t go over well.

And you know how you know him too. His admission isn’t half of the extent to which you know him, but it feels right in the uncertainty of the moment. “Yeah,” you agree, “you look very familiar to me, too.”

He nods, watches you throw out the excess of the paper napkins and juts out an open palm as if it could cut through the thick sheen of ice neither of you are doing a particularly great job at breaking. “Forgive me, I’m normally much better with introductions, I’m—”

Before he can get the last word in, your boyfriend is at your side, slithering his arm around your waist and pulling you against him, “babe, you good?” he interrupts, “must have been that mystery meat or something —” he notices Ezra’s outstretched hand and takes it, shaking it quickly. “Sup, man?” Head nod. “I’m Logan.”

Ezra gives him a sarcastic head nod back, wipes his hand against the pocket of his pants and then puts it inside, “Ezra,” he answers plainly, shifting his eyes from Logan back to you.

“Ah, book guy,” Logan points from you to Ezra like you’d had some sort of long conversation about him and the book in his pocket in the infinitesimal amount of time he’s been on the ship.

Ezra slaps his back pocket, and then points back at Logan like he’s in on the joke, “yup that’s me, ‘book guy’.” He takes the worn paperback out of his cargo pants and makes a minor show of the title, “it’s a good one.”

You take note of the cover, it could have been a deep green at one point but the color faded significantly and you can see the dips and creases of pages that have been tagged over time. “The Master and Margarita,” you recite, “I’ve never read it.”

Logan runs his hand up your back and Ezra notices in his peripheral but he pretends he doesn’t. “One of my favorites,” Logan lies, and you can see Ezra’s ears perk up, “can’t say I ever carried it around though,” he laughs a bit too loud for the situation and you chuckle along with him to guise it.

“I didn’t know you’ve read Bulgakov,” you say to Logan, looking up a few inches to meet his eyes.

“Long time ago,” he answers, waving his hand exaggeratedly away from the group of you, “but, yeah.”

“A book such as this one stays with you long after you’ve put it down,” Ezra interjects, thumbing the browning pages, “humor me, Logan, I’m always interested to know a fellow reader’s favorite part.”

He knows what he’s doing, and if it weren’t for the suave way he twists his vernacular it would be even more evident. Ezra’s work has taught him to weed out the good and bad. The trustworthy from the shifty. He supposes that if he weren’t so interested in you, that he’d have left the conversation as it stood and wished you both safe travels to The Ephrate, but now if he found a way to keep you in his presence longer he would take it.

The surely look on Logan’s face dies quickly, and he lifts his hand that’s on your back to run it through his hair. “That’s a tough one, man,” He blows a raspberry through his lips like he’s having trouble sifting through all the themes and contents of the book in his brain, “I couldn’t just pick one. I mean, you know what I’m saying right? It’s a disservice to Bul-kov.”

“ _Bulga_ -kov,” Ezra enunciates, nodding at Logan like he understands where he’s coming from.

You hide your embarrassment by dipping your head to stare at your feet, but when you look up again Ezra’s looking back at you. Taking you in again. It takes a few seconds but he clears his throat and offers his hand to you for the second time.

“Well, it’s been my pleasure to meet you —” he stops where he’s stuck on your name, and you tell him. He repeats it back to you slower, stuck on the syllables, letting them dance on his tongue. It felt like a word he just couldn’t remember—it was there, tauntingly familiar, but he could never get it out, and there you finally were to fill in the blank.

You take his hand in yours and shake it softly, and as if it weren’t before that moment, everything became real. Not a dream, you weren’t asleep. He was real and he was standing in front of you and he didn’t disappear into dust when you touched him.

“Keep this,” Ezra says when you finally let go of one another. He hands you his copy of _The Master and Margarita_ and you’re slow to take it from him, “I implore you, those pages have seen enough of me for twelve lifetimes.”

“Are you sure?” You ask, taking the copy fully from him now and curling it into your chest.

He smiles at you, nodding in approval, “Certain, Birdie. It’s a long ride to the mainland—gonna need something to keep you occupied.” He shifts to face Logan, gives him a half-assed salute, “Logan.”

“Yeah see ya around, man,” Logan waves back, and you both watch Ezra make his way to the exit doors. He looks back at you once, as if it might be the last time he’d get a chance to, before breaching the opening and disappearing through it.

“Interesting guy,” Logan says once he’s turned back to face you.

“Yup,” you agree, wafting through the pages of the book absentmindedly. You notice unintelligible scribbling of ink painting the insides of the book and realize it’s Ezra’s own little notes written in the margins.

“C’mon let’s go sit back down,” Logan pulls you toward your abandoned table but you stop him.

“You know what, I’m still not feeling that great,” you rub your stomach as you speak, “mind if I head back to the pod to lay down for a little bit?”

Logan leans in and kisses your forehead, “no of course not,” he cups your cheek with his hand and you lean into it thoughtfully, “I’ll come get you for dinner.”

—

You should have just started reading the book front to back like any sane person would do. Skim the prologue, glance at the acknowledgments and then get down to the gritty. But, if you’re being honest with yourself the promise of Ezra’s own thoughts penned across the pages was more enticing than any story you could have read.

You fan through the book again while you sit cross-legged on yours and Logan’s shared cot. You notice the color of Ezra’s ink switches from black to blue and back again, sometimes within the same chapters. Sometimes it’s pencil instead of ink all together. You imagine him writing in the worn paperback, putting his pen down to continue reading and losing track of it, or opening the book back up another day and realizing he doesn’t have a pen at all, scouring his surroundings for anything to write with.

You stop on a page where he underlined a paragraph.

_Page 106:_

_“You spoke your words as though you denied the very existence of the shadows or of evil. Think, now: where would your good be if there were no evil and what would the world look like without shadow?”_

You read it a few times, in different tones and cadences, out loud to yourself. “You’ll need to explain that one to me, Ezra,” you say.

You fan the pages again.

_Chapter 24:_

_“Even at night, in moonlight, I have no rest… Why did they trouble me? Oh, gods, gods…”_

You follow the words into the margin where Ezra left a note,

_“Can’t rest when I’m sleeping, she doesn’t let me sleep when I’m dreaming.”_

_She_. Your body responds to this in a weird way. Somehow feeling like you’re eavesdropping where you shouldn’t be. Like you’re reading something not meant for you. You close the book quietly and tap the cover with your fingers, think maybe you should find him and give it back—but he knew what was written in this book when he gave it to you, he knew you would see it. You move through the pages again, stopping when you see a paragraph circled several times in dark black ink.

_Page 138:_

_“Love leaped out in front of us like a murderer in an alley leaping out of nowhere, and struck us both at once. As lightning strikes, as a Finnish knife strikes! She, by the way, insisted afterwards that it wasn’t so, that we had, of course, loved each other for a long, long time, without knowing each other, never having seen each other…”_

The last lines, _‘without knowing each other, never having seen each other’_ were underlined, and etched into the margin in strong capital letters Ezra had written one word.

_**YOU.** _

You brought the book down onto your lap and stared ahead awhile, marinating in the quote, stroking a finger over the word inked into the page in Ezra’s handwriting. You got this strange notion that he knew the things that resonated with him in this book would either be a deterrent, or like a light bulb switched on for you. A shared epiphany perhaps. Maybe just a twisted way of making you feel closer to him. There was no denying the shocking resemblance he shared to the man in your dreams. From the blonde in his hair to the befitting scars, the tattoo, the rough accented drawl of his voice when he spoke.

You picked the book back up and sifted through again, stopped on a dog eared page and another underlined group of words,

_“But what can be done, the one who loves must share the fate of the one he loves.”_

Then Ezra’s addition in the empty space on the page: _in fate I will find you._

The notes went on and on like this for dozens more pages, circled and underlined, fragmented pieces of literature strung together like a puzzle. Some of Ezra’s notes were more decipherable than others, some paragraphs had no explanation, others were littered with asterisks and stars, like his own personal key.

You spent an hour reading through it, another hour laying flat on your back staring at the ceiling in contemplation. Before you even have a chance to close your eyes and rest you hear the door of your pod slide open with a clang as Logan makes his way inside.

“How’s my girl feeling?” He asks, scooting up next to you on the bed. You groan a bit and turn to face him, bury your head in his chest.

“I’ve been better,” you admit, sighing heavily and Logan scratches his fingers through your scalp.

“I made dinner reservations,” he says.

“Dinner reservations?” You question, lifting your head to look up at him, “there’s a restaurant on this thing?”

“There is exactly one restaurant on this thing,” he answers, scooting down a bit to be face level with you, he leans in and captures your lips in a quick kiss. “We have an hour, though,” he says and then kisses you again.

“Hmmm, a whole hour,” you tease, “what ever shall we do.” He winks at you and slides down your stomach further, lifting the fabric and planting a few kisses to your skin there. You laugh as he tickles your sides and slides your pants down your legs, taking your panties with them.

“I’ll be down here if you need me,” he jokes, and you bite your lip to stifle a smile.

As soon as he parts you with his tongue your hands are tangled in his hair, guiding his mouth where you want it most and whimpering when he finds the perfect spot. Logan loses himself in it, sucking and licking sporadically, reacting to your body, letting you take the reins. He licks a heavy stripe up your core and let’s his tongue play with the little bundle of nerves there. You arch into his mouth, hold him there against you while he works.

You feel amazing but it isn’t enough. You need the friction of him inside of you, so you pull him up by his chin and guide him on top of you. “I need you to fuck me,” you say and he kisses you hard, pulls the zipper down on his pants and you wrestle the rest down his legs until he’s hard at attention and grinding himself against the wet center of your body.

“Like this?” He asks, pressing the tip of his cock inside of you, and pulling back out again, “tell me how you want it.”

“Hard,” is your only answer, and you pull him against you again until he’s seated completely inside of you.

He fucks into you hard and steady, reaches a hand up your shirt to pinch at your pebbled nipples while he rides you and you whimper at the feeling. You have both your hands wrapped around his neck, scratching at the skin there, and Logan grunts loud against your shoulder when you clench around him.

His face comes down to bury into your throat, he kisses a trail up your neck to the bottom of your ear and you close your eyes, and like a switch all of a sudden your mind is elsewhere. Hanging in the balance between fiction and reality.

He lifts his head again and he’s Ezra, sweat stricken and exultant. Filling your body with heavy strokes as you writhe underneath him. He picks up his pace, driving you wildly into the mattress and you reach a hand up to feel if he’s real, run your thumb against the hair of his mustache and slide it down to catch on the flesh of his bottom lip. He juts his tongue out, licks your finger into his mouth and sucks on it once.

“Fuck,” you whine, dropping your hand down between your two bodies and touching yourself while he fucks you, “keep going.”

He stays steady while you play with your clit, the friction of him inside you pairing heavenly with the stimulation and you know you’re close now, you pull him down to meet you and he comes halfway, closing his mouth over yours as you spar with your orgasm.

“You gonna come for me, Birdie?” he breathes, and you nod back at him, “let me feel it.”

The rush overcame you even quicker than you expected, blinding you for a second as your climax hit its peak and when you came to, when the room had finally stopped spinning, Logan was pinning you to the bed with his heavy exuded body. You felt your thighs painted slick with him and ran a hand up his spine as the guilt washed over.

Every time before this one that you’d dreamed yourself naked and underneath Ezra, it wasn’t anything more than that. A dream. An impossible scenario with a non-existent man. Now it felt different. Not just because he was real, but because you _wanted_ him to be. You _knew_ him to be.

And you weren’t dreaming.

—

After Ezra left you and Logan in the common area he circled the ship twice on foot just to calm his own racing pulse. Get his mind right. There you were, an angel in front of his very eyes. The deity of his every waking dream come to life. His most sacred companion latched onto the arm of another man and there wasn’t a Kevva damned sane thing he could do about it.

Yeah, he gave that book to you on purpose. He had Logan to thank for that, and if all it got him was the empty win of proving the man a liar, he would still take it. Commit to the gamble with no other cards to play. If you read it and figured you knew Ezra in the same way he knew you, that was the best clue he could offer without leaving himself completely vulnerable.

When he finally got back to his pod the exhaustion of the previous days’ travels caught up with him. Unhindered by the constant moving, always looking over his own shoulder, just able to relax for the ride back to The Ephrate. He slipped into the beginning stages of sleep easily, humming peacefully with the ambient background noise of space helping him along. It took almost no time for you to show up there with him. Sitting at the edge of the unmade _bed._

_“So I’m real, huh?” You said, tisking in his direction._

_“Don’t ridicule me, sweetheart,” he answered, twisting just so, putting you better in his line of vision. “You’re with another man,” he pointed a finger at you, “I think I’ll leave the detriment of explanation to you.”_

_“I don’t want him, Ezra,” you slithered closer to his side, tracing your fingertips up his torso, “it’s always been you.”_

_“Well, now you’re just being malicious,” he let you climb on top of him, straddle his middle, he granted you a chaste kiss and then pushed you away from him softly, “if I cannot have you out there I won’t allow myself the tactless pleasure here either.”_

He snapped himself awake and sighed openly, ran a dark hand down the expanse of his face and cursed low in his throat.

He needed to get you out of his head, spare himself the endless disappointment seemingly following him from point A to Z. You didn’t wait for him. You _didn’t_ want him. To no one’s fault, and that was the hard truth of it. One thing he did know was he wouldn’t survive this cycle and a half trip to The Ephrate if he didn’t find another way to occupy his time.

—

The restaurant is absolutely bustling, and it makes sense. The only semi-social thing to do while traveling through space comes in the form of eating and getting drunk to your heart’s content. The waiters are done up in button down shirts and it feels fake fancy but you’ll take what you can get.

Logan pulls you along with him by your hand into the venue and a hostess seats you at a sparkly booth. The lighting is decent, yellow hues to keep it homely, this could be a proper date.

You finagle with your menu for a minute, flip it over back and front and cajole with Logan over the cocktails, when your waiter approaches the table you look up with a smile that dies on your lips immediately.

Just past their head in your line of vision is Ezra, sat up at the restaurant bar with a tumbler of whiskey in one hand, the other slung over the backside of the woman in the bar stool beside him. He talks close to her face, leans in to whisper something in her ear and they both laugh.

You feel that familiar tightening in your chest again, and snap back to look at the waiter when Logan’s voice interrupts your zoning, “they asked what you want to drink, babe,”

“Right, sorry, not feeling myself today,” you scan the menu with your finger and point at a drink, “this one sounds good, thanks.”

You find Ezra again when the waiter walks away, he’s playing with the tiny straw in his drink and scanning the restaurant while his date takes a swig of her beverage. He sees you across the room already looking at him and he lights up a little, lifting his drink toward you with a nod. He takes a sip from his glass and sets it back down, and you shoot him a friendly smile in return.

He gives you a knowing wink as the woman turns back to face him, and he doesn’t waste any time leaning down and putting his mouth on hers.


	3. Covetous

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A soulmates AU- You and Ezra have visited each other in reoccurring dreams since you were young — never having met or seen one another in real life, never even sure the other truly existed. That is, until both your pods dock on the same ship headed toward The Ephrate. *smut.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ‘Lots of smut to start this off, Ezra's trying to deal with his feelings in a way he thinks works best. You struggle with jealousy, Logan is... Logan. Smut- but of course. Zeek Earl, thank you.

**LAST NIGHT**

He initially wanted to fuck her like he would have fucked you. Long lingering strokes, heavy weight of his dick stretching her so full her eyes would roll back in her head. He thought, ineptly, that if he fucked her that good, that thoroughly, word of it might criss-cross the transport’s gossip grapevine a few times and fall on your ears. _Did you hear what that man Ezra did to her?_ They’d whisper, _He made her cum how many times? Oh gods, how is she still walking?_

It was self-complacent, he knew that. Unfair to the lovely woman attached to his arm and grabbing at the buckle of his pants before they even reached his pod. He realized quickly when he got her undressed that he couldn’t fuck her like he wanted to fuck you, simply because, well, she _wasn’t_ you. He couldn’t pour that type of endearment into someone else even if it was just pretend. He was attracted to her, which wasn’t abnormal, Ezra was attracted to a lot of people, had slept with a lot of people, but a relationship? Never. You were that empty hole for him, one that someone else’s presence couldn’t fill no matter how many ways they tried to squeeze into it. So Ezra wasn’t going to fuck her like he’d fuck you, no, he was gonna fuck her like he needed to _forget_ about you.

Nipping at her dark skin as she moaned underneath him, balling her hair into his fist to tug it, pulling her back against his chest and railing into her from behind. He fit his lips into the crook of her neck beneath her ear, and licked the salt off her skin—brought his right hand around to play with her clit as she rocked her hips down against him.

“You like that?” he asked, pushing her forward again with his hand still wrapped in her hair until she was propped on all fours for him. She twisted to smile back over her shoulder, face knotted in pleasure while Ezra split her wet center open over his cock. “Yeah, I know you do,” he answered himself.

He ran his free hand down her spine, feeling it jolt with every thrust he gave, and circled the thick flesh of her ass once, twice, before bringing a harsh palm down against the skin there with a sickening crack. She whimpered into the open air of the pod, fists clinging to the thin white sheet of Ezra’s bed as a rush of slick escaped her core, she clenched hard around him, felt the drip of her own pussy dampen the insides of her thighs.

Ezra curled himself over her back, let his damp forehead settle between the blades of her shoulders as he fucked her harder, the slick walls of her pussy gripping him tighter and tighter the deeper he pushed himself. He closed his eyes for a beat, started to drift into a daydream where he felt you, could imagine he was fucking up into you instead. He skated both his hands around her ribs, massaged the plush heavy mounds of her chest with his fingers. “Fuck—” he sighed, pinching her nipples between his thumb and pointer fingers, pulling them away from her body roughly. That familiar heat ignited in his groin, sent a sweat to his lower back, a buzz up his spine. He pecked the skin on her back, pebbled his lips in sloppy open mouth kisses as his thrusts became erratic.

“Spank me again,” she said, and Ezra lifted his head from her back with a snap, fantasy of you fading promptly into the stark contrast of reality. “Please,” she bit her lip, “do it again.”

His hand abandoned her chest to slide down the curve of her hip to her ass, teased the plump skin there with his fingers before spanking down on her again. She yelped, the noise fading to a delighted whimper as Ezra felt her clench around him again, felt the warm pooling of her arousal wash over his cock as it moved in and out of her.

“You’re a filthy one, huh sweetheart?” He teased, bringing his palm down on her tingling flesh once more and reveling in the stinging of his own palm as well. He pushed her down against the bed, flat on her stomach, laid the weight of himself on her completely and ground into her, grunting low in his chest as he felt the rounds of her ass fill the space of his hips while he fucked her.

She cried out at the pleasure, reaching back to wind an arm around Ezra’s head as it fit against her shoulder, ran her fingers through the damp brown locks. Ezra kissed her neck, nuzzled his nose against the sharp outline of her jaw, “I can tell you’re gonna cum, sweetheart,” he breathed, “yeah?”

She whimpered as she nodded, eyes slipping closed, “yes— fuck yes, _yes_ ” her wailing turned animalistic, and Ezra corded his palm over her mouth to quell the noise. Pumping into her in quick deep thrusts until he felt her legs start to shake under him.

“That’s it, go ‘head,” he grunted, giving her one last long stroke before she keened into the skin of his hand and he felt her core contract and spill erratically around him. “Divine,” he hummed, “fucking beautiful.” She went limp underneath him and he pulled out of her, stroking himself, falling back against the wall behind the bed.

She turned her head to face him, watched him jerk his cock slowly, agonizingly compared to what he’d just done to her. She shifted over and propped up on her knees, leaned down to take the head of his dick in her mouth as he pumped the rest of his length. Ezra groaned deep, keeping his eyes closed and head tipped back against the wall as her tongue swirled around him.

He could imagine you this way, knelt next to him and sucking him off, keep his eyes closed and play the tape in his mind. Your ass swaying gently in the background while your mouth takes him all the way down to the base.

He laced his fingers in her hair, pressed a little firmer on her scalp and she let him, leaving the pace up to Ezra as he lifted his hips to match the way he was bringing her throat down around him. “Fuck that’s good,” he breathed, cording his other hand through her hair then too, holding her head with two palms and fucking up into her mouth.

She gripped hard enough into his thighs to leave a mark, felt her spit pool, and drip down his length messily and he didn’t falter.

“So good for me, Birdie,” he panted, “make me— making me cum,” Ezra’s eyes were screwed shut, his forehead beading with sweat as he felt his shaft start to pulse, she closed her mouth around his length and sucked hard as the ropes of warm liquid painted her tongue, her throat.

When he opened his eyes she was wiping at the corner of her mouth with the back of her wrist, and Ezra shifted down on the bed to capture her lips in a quick kiss before slinking all the way to the thin mattress. He sighed when he hit the pillow, and she leaned over to rest on his chest, laying her chin against her forearms so she could see his face.

“That was amazing,” she said, smiling at Ezra and the corner of his mouth twisted into a smirk, he ran a hand down her back, skating his fingers lightly on her spine.

He thought he would feel different. A liberation of some sort from fucking someone else. Not that he ever physically fucked you, but it felt like he had. A hundred times, a thousand times. And yeah, he’d had sex with other people of course, in his travels, on the job, but never knowing you were real, or tangible — never while you were sitting in a fucking pod down the corridor with another man.

“Why’d you call me that?” Her voice filled the silence of the room again.

“Hm?” Ezra mumbled, neither here nor there anymore, mind in a static limbo.

“Birdie,” she said, running a long finger up the span of his chest, drawing little lines with her nail, “You called me Birdie.”

Ezra grinded his teeth a bit and pressed himself further into the pillow, counted the lights on the ceiling twice over before meeting her eye, “force of habit,” he said.

“I could get used to it,” she flirted, but Ezra shifted his weight into his palms and pushed himself to sit up, he found his boxers on the floor next to the bed and snagged them off the linoleum.

The sex was supposed to make him forget about you, not crave you. He felt somehow worse then, than he had two minutes prior when the woman in his bed was swallowing his fucking load.

Ezra knew innately, that there wouldn’t be another you. That there wasn’t meant to be. And maybe you knew that too, but he’d have to fight for it. If the universe put him there on this ship with you it was for a reason, a final test, and he arrived alone on that transport with nothing but a bag of gems, but he wasn’t leaving without you. He wouldn’t be damned to his dreams.

“I enjoyed this,” he said, pulling his boxers up his legs and tucking himself into them. He stood from the sheets and twisted awkwardly to find where his shirt had been tossed in the heat of things.

The woman watched him get dressed and reluctantly found her own dress splayed across the floor, shrugging it over her head with a faint frown.

“Wish this pod was bigger,” Ezra lied, finding a subtle way to end the evening as he bent over and picked her panties up off the floor, handing them to her as she made her way around the bed to where he stood in front of the door.

“We’ll have to go to mine next time then,” she answered, pressing up on her tippy toes to kiss Ezra one last time. He gave her a sad smile, and an empty nod as she left, watching her disappear down the hallway before closing the latch and cursing under his breath.

\--  
**NOW**

You had watched the whole booze-induced philandering go down between Ezra and this mystery woman from across the restaurant. From the _very_ distasteful make out session, in your opinion, to the lingering way his hand played with the seam of her little gold dress where it fell on her thigh—all the way to the moment he signed the tab mere minutes later, guiding her away from the bar with a playful pinch to the meat of her ass.

It wasn’t fair for it to hurt you, you knew that, especially not with Logan sitting an arms length away, spoon feeding you several different tapas from the appetizer platter he’d ordered. Somehow you had this introverted feeling, like someone who’d caught a person taking credit for what was theirs, but was too shy to speak up. Only, Ezra _wasn’t_ yours, he wasn’t the guy in your dreams that was devoted to you, he was free to do whatever, _whoever_ he wanted—yet you still wouldn’t let yourself fall asleep last night because you were angry with him, you didn’t want to see him.

“You need a fucking coffee,” Logan says, trailing you down the hall toward the concession area, your annoyance with the events of the night before had bled over into the morning, the exhaustion obviously not helping your mood.

You roll your eyes and push the doors open into the common room, “I barely slept,” you say and Logan catches your wrist in his hand, twisting you around to face him.

“Still not feeling good?” He asks, cupping your jaw with both his hands, rubbing two soft thumbs down the spanse of your cheeks. You wish you could tell him the truth, that you felt perfectly fine despite the aching pit of anomalous jealousy over Ezra fucking another woman. You don’t even know if he fucked her, you’re just jumping to conclusions, and how dare you anyway?

“Yeah,” you decide to agree with a soft smile, “it’s probably just travel sickness.” You kiss the inside of one of his wrists before he drops them away, and then make your way to the self-serve coffee area.

You see him almost immediately, back turned, facing the machines. Hair still bedraggled like he couldn’t bother to comb it before the caffeine hit his system. You think for a second to detour and skip the coffee for something stronger all together but it’s too late when Ezra turns around and sees you standing there first.

He gives you a shy smile, one that feels like it should be followed by an apology but the buzzing tension between the two of you tells him otherwise, “’morning,” he says, voice no higher than a whisper and he clears his throat.

“This fucking guy,” Logan barks, clapping a hand down on Ezra’s back like they’re old friends, “surprised you made it out of bed after the night you must have had,” Logan chuckles and nudges him with a playful elbow.

Ezra shifts awkwardly, scratches the back of his neck with his free hand and focuses on you, tries to gauge your reaction to the conversation but you must look just as horrified as he does.

“Seriously man, I’ll be honest when you first got off the pods I would have never guessed you had that type of game,” Logan steps around Ezra to grab two styrofoam cups off the countertop as he speaks. You and Ezra stay locked on one another while Logan pours your coffees, silence speaking every unsaid word.

 _I’m sorry,_ you see written in his eyes. _Me too,_ you answer him back.

“You gonna see her again?” Logan asks, pulling both your attentions back to him as he hands you your barely-hot-enough cup of coffee.

“Never even got her name,” Ezra answers him finally, taking a sip from his cup. He thinks somehow that this admission may save him some sort of face, subtly let you know that he didn’t care about the woman enough to even ask her name. All hopefulness dies on his tongue when you scoff into your own cup.

Logan swings an arm around your shoulder and crowds you into his side, “don’t mind this one,” he says to Ezra, “she’s been in a mood since dinner last night.”

“That’s _not_ true,” you answer quickly, shaking your head dramatically back and forth like you’d just been accused of murder, and you see Ezra’s one eyebrow shoot up like he’s just _solved_ said murder.

“Oh bullshit,” Logan presses, “you said it yourself, you couldn’t even sleep last night”

“Okay enough, Logan,” you say, cheeks running hot and if the situation could get any worse you were sure it would, “Ezra doesn't want to hear about it, he seems like a pretty _busy_ guy.”

“It may surprise you just how interested I am,” Ezra says back, crossing his arms over his chest and flashing you a sly smile.

“Fine, fine,” Logan raises his one hand in mock surrender and turns his attention to Ezra again, “what’s the busy bachelor got going on today?” You wince at the way he says that and Ezra keeps his eyes on you for a few more seconds before entertaining it.

“I hate to be so formulaic,” Ezra says, chuckling to himself, “but I was actually headed to find the library on this thing.”

You shrug out of Logan’s grasp and cross your own arms, feel a sort of lingering embarrassment like caging yourself into your own body might hide you from it.

“Book guy,” Logan repeats the previous day’s sentiment to Ezra again, chuckles along with him. “Well hey man let us show you where it is, we got nothing going on today - or any day until we hit The Ephrate.”

“We don’t have-,” you begin and Ezra cuts you off.

“I’d be elated for the company,” he smiles, heads toward the doors to the long hallway, “been quite some time since I’ve had any.”

You and Logan follow him out the doors, and you hang back a bit and let your boyfriend walk beside Ezra. You watch them both converse languidly, measure them next to each other. Logan has a few inches of height on Ezra, but Ezra makes up for it in width. His broad shoulders fill the back of his cotton long sleeve nicely, you can see the way his shoulder blades dip and curve where they’re outlined, follow the lines of muscle down the planes of his back. As if he senses your eyes, Ezra glances back over his shoulder and checks on you, ignores whatever it is that Logan is chatting his ear off about for a few seconds until you smile at him, and then returns to listening to Logan.

“So what do you do, man?” Logan asks.

“I’m a _prospector_ ,” Ezra leans into the last word, “you’re lucky enough to catch me on the come back from a moon we call The Green.”

You walk a little faster to hear him better, interested in everything that is Ezra, the man himself and how he came to be walking in front of you. Maybe it would explain some things. Why you see him every night in your dreams, why you’re cursedly in love with him despite just learning his name a day prior. What if you were long lost family or something, as fucked up as that would be.

“So you’re like a miner, that’s cool dude,” Logan says.

“Well not really,” you correct him, “a miner digs for oil, minerals.” Ezra slows down a bit to fall into step with you, listen to your explanation as Logan continues ahead. “You dig for ... _gems_ , then” you turn your attention to Ezra as you speak.

“That is right, Birdie,” he says, giving you a proud nod that makes you feel like you won an unrequited race.

“Look at you babe, you know your shit,” Logan turns a bit to bump your thigh with his knuckles, “book guy, meet book girl,” he jokes pointedly at Ezra, and Ezra takes the bait to nudge you with his knuckles as well.

“I’ve met you a thousand times then, book girl,” he says to you, “in a thousand stories.” He shifts his gaze down to you, says something with his eyes again but you can’t quite decipher it over the rapidly beating sound of your heart.

“She does read a lot,” Logan says, completely oblivious. You all round a corner of the ship's hallway and stop in front of an elevator, Logan hits the ‘up’ button and you watch the blinking lights start descending from the floors above you.

“I do read a lot,” you manage, “but I like to keep my books unlittered with love letters— in case someone reads them after me.” Ezra smirks at you then, watches the elevator spring open and lets Logan walk inside first.

He holds his hand out to keep the doors open and steps to the side so you can go ahead of him, “it’s impressive,” he says as you pass him, smirk still rampant across his face “I wouldn’t expect someone who was too ill to sleep to have spent their night reading my annotations.” Ezra follows you into the elevator, studies your face as the doors close behind him.

“So what do you do out there prospecting all by yourself?” Logan asks, “How long are you gone for?”

Ezra clicks his tongue, “This time around I was out there for seven cycles— not a hell I’d banish anyone to by the way, before you think me formidable.”

“Fuckkkk dude,” Logan draws out the words like he’s in pain, bending at the waist a bit, “what the fuck do you do out there alone all the time? I’d go insane.”

“Oh I’m not entirely by myself,” Ezra says, the elevator halts at a new floor and the doors screech open, “I read,” he starts, waiting for you and Logan to walk through the opening first before following close behind, “I study the foliage, sometimes, I meet a bird or two.” You all see the glass entrance of the library in the distance, and Logan makes a silent gesture toward them, “And I am never alone in my dreams.”

All three of you stop in front of the double doors, your eyes flicker to Ezra’s and hold his stare. If there was a moment of realization it would be this one, a subtle way he was trying so hard to tell you something you didn’t know yet if you wanted to be true. He searched you for a reaction, a flicker of divulgence, and you thought maybe you could just - tell him. Tell him you were never alone in your dreams either, tell him what he already knew.

“That’s poetic man,” Logan says and you and Ezra both break your gaze to look at him, “here it is, ye olde library.” Ezra holds his hand out to shake Logan’s in thanks, nods at you as he does. “Hey listen, why don’t me and you go grab some drinks later? I want to hear about the prospecting thing some more, yeah?”

“I very much appreciate the invitation,” Ezra starts, looking for a way out of it, “but—”

“Oh, c’mon, what do you have going on? We’re all stuck on this thing for more than a cycle— please, on me,” Logan urges, “this one is sick of me, she could use some peace and quiet,” he juts a thumb in your direction.

Ezra looks back and forth between you and Logan, finds your eyes and you shrug at him like you don’t know the right answer. He struggles with the obligation and quickly realizes there's no viable way out of it, “I’ll see you there, then.”

—

Logan’s already more than half in the bag by the time Ezra meets him down at the bar. Canoodling with the less than optimistic bartender where she stands trapped behind the bar top. Ezra counts two empty bottles in front of him and a third half empty clutched in his palm before he even sits down.

“I started without you man,” Logan says, clapping a heavy hand down on Ezra’s shoulder when he takes the seat next to him.

“I can see that,” Ezra answers, giving the bartender a nod at the empty bottles to let her know he’ll take one.

“She’s nice,” Logan says pointing at the bartender as she turns to walk away, “she’d probably fuck you.”

“I’d hardly say a woman being nice to you, means she would sleep with you, Logan,” Ezra shakes his head and looks around, hopes that there’s no one within earshot of the pair of them that might mistake them for friends.

“Nah, nah man you know what I mean,” Logan slurs, takes a sip of his beer and points the neck of the bottle at Ezra, “like if you’re looking for someone to sleep with again— ya know, she looks nice.”

The bartender returns, shuffles Ezra’s beer over to him and pushes another in Logan’s direction, Ezra gives her a look and she shrugs.

“I told her to keep em’ coming” Logan explains, “and a couple shots!” He shouts toward her as she walks away again.

Ezra sips his beer and watches the bartender grab a shiny bottle off the top shelf, pour two shot glasses full.

“So tell me about that chick from last night,” Logan says, smiling wildly at him.

“And to think you dragged me down here to talk prospecting,” Ezra tisks, and Logan gives him a fake pout.

“Anything to get the girlfriend to cut me loose for a night.”

This doesn’t sit well with Ezra, thinking then of all the time he wishes he had with you, all the time in his life he’s spent imagining what he would do with you if given the chance. If you were really his. And here Logan sits happy to spend time without you, happy to leave you alone in their pod for the night so he can get drunk at a shitty transport bar and make passes at the fucking wait staff.

The bartender returns with the shots and puts them on a couple leather coasters, “hardly seems like you’re in shackles,” Ezra answers him plainly, and downs the contents of the liquor.

“She’s wild man,” Logan laughs to himself, “fucking firecracker in bed,” he does his shot too, crinkling his nose at the aftertaste as it slides down his throat. “She likes it rough too dude, like—” he shakes his head like his mind is racing with the picture of you, “and the _body_ on this girl—” he whistles low and closes his eyes, his body sways unsteadily in his chair.

Ezra taps his fingers idly on the bar, stares in the direction of the door, anywhere but at Logan, afraid his face will give more away than he’s willing to admit, not that Logan would remember it anyway. Inebriated son of a bitch. He has a sudden inclination to punch him, crack the bones in his nose for talking about you like that, for talking about _his_ girl like that, and half a mind to leave him at the bar and go to you right now, find you alone.

“Do you get off on it or something Logan?” Ezra seethes, challenging him, crouching in closer to his face to speak, “another man imagining your girlfriend naked, imagining how she’d take it.”

Logan sips his beer, laughs lazily like he can’t even comprehend what Ezra’s saying anyhow, “woah, man,” he laughs again, “fine, just tell me about prospecting — jeez.”

Ezra leans back against his chair and sighs, downs the rest of his beer and waves a hand at the bartender for the tab, “you wouldn’t understand if I did.”

Ezra signs the check just in time to see Logan sway off his bar stool and nearly collapse against the bar, he picks him up off the counter and shrugs a dead arm over his own shoulder so he can support his weight, then drags him toward the door, “stay with me Logan,” he says, kicking them into the corridor hallway, “which way is your pod?”

—

For whatever reason the thought of Ezra and Logan sharing a few drinks at the bar was keeping you on some catastrophic anxietal edge.

What were they talking about? You knew better than Logan actually giving a fuck about prospecting, he thought Ezra was a miner, for kevva’s sake.

You sit down on the unmade bed and fling your head backwards into the pillows, suck your teeth as you try to imagine what their conversation sounds like. You quickly abandon that line of thought when the image of Ezra and Logan at the bar reminds you of the way Ezra looked sitting there with that woman last night.

“Fuck,” you curse at yourself and slam a lazy fist against the mattress. You thought you couldn’t escape him when he only infiltrated your dreams but this was another level. You let your eyes slip closed and think about him again, think about the way he _kissed_ her. Imagine the brush of his mustache against her upper lip and lift your own hand to ghost over your mouth in the same place.

Against every fiber in your body screaming at you not to, you think about how it probably felt skating down the inside of her thigh, tickling the warm skin there. You bring your hand down to touch the soft inside of your leg and sigh, squeeze your eyes closed and see Ezra’s shoulders spreading you apart, feel his lips kiss a line up to your center.

You tense as you push your hand past the band of your pants, slide it under your panty line, drag your own finger up the wet seam of your slit. Sighing, you press a long finger down to your entrance and let it dip inside, see Ezra again and whimper—but your fantasy is immediately shot to hell when you hear the loud bang of a fist against the outside of your pod door.

“Fuck!” you yelp in surprise, collecting yourself as quick as you can when the door starts to slide open and you see Ezra first, ducking his head and stepping inside. “Where’s — what are you—” you ramble, smoothing down the wrinkled mess of your sleep shorts.

Ezra shuffles past you, dragging a half conscious Logan behind him and you shake your head in embarrassment, pinch the bridge of your nose as Ezra makes his way to the bed you’d seconds prior tried to fuck yourself on. He shrugs your boyfriend off his shoulder and let’s him drop face down on the rumpled sheets.

“All yours, Birdie,” Ezra jokes, straightening his shirt from where it shifted off his shoulder on the trek from bar to pod.

“I—” you start, and Ezra tries to make his way to the door again so not to impose on your space uninvited. He has one leg out the small opening and you can’t explain what possesses you in the moment but you stop him.

“Stay,” you tell him, rather than ask.

He studies your face for a second, knows there’s no way he’d ever deny you, regardless of time space and circumstance. He doesn’t say anything but he doesn’t leave either.

“I might need your help,” you justify, unsure if the excuse is even necessary, “if— if he wakes up.”

Ezra nods, puts his hand out for you to grab and you do, he motions his head toward the empty hallway and you follow him outside, closing the latch to the pod behind you.


End file.
